This article is a hymn for the importance of a simple design aesthetic with regard to web design. It is fast becoming the prevailing quality that web designers are being requested to produce in their work.
The advantages of simplicity
“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.” – A well known quote attributed to Plato.
In wise circles, simplicity is a quality deemed as important as any lofty passionate ambition. It was only after the technological revolution that the term simplicity unreasonably slipped into one with connotations of repressiveness and restraint. The new popularity of simply stated content is a sign of the term regaining its deserved positivity. It was bound to happen sooner or later, to such a true quality.
In the world of web design, simplicity has a number of benefits. Initially, the content will be more easily read, which is, after all, the purpose of published content. A high proportion of visitors to websites scan read to before they decide to read the content comprehensively; a simple web design will result in more visitors relaxing their right hand to enjoy the content they missed while vigorously scanning. The website will be extensively more responsive and less troublesome to navigate. The standards that users have been accustomed to raise these benefits to a critical magnitude.
The benefits are commercial as well: the websites depend upon less disk space and bandwidth, and they are easier to maintain and debug. This frees up two of the most valuable conditions that each company strives for: time and money. However, no web designer should be seduced by the false claim that a simple web design is less bothersome than a complicated web design. A simple web design calls for more than simplicity; it must have real semblance in its appeal, and this is not an undemanding quality to achieve in one’s work.
How to keep it simple
Because something is simple doesn’t mean it is simply earned. Effective simplicity is a painfully difficult affect to achieve in design. It can be achieved without effectiveness easily enough, but a strikingly crafted web design requires more craft than one would imagine. The difficulty of minimalism can be realized by the high supply of failed Hemingway imitators. The trait of effective simplicity is a high ambition indeed.
Just as a writer of literary fiction cuts away at a sentence, removing each word that isn’t entirely necessary, a web designer focused on a minimalist design will purge any element of the design that doesn’t contribute to the content or philosophy of the owner of the website.
The topical trend of effective simplicity – because it is essential that the web design is current as well as simple – is circular design. The tidy pattern of circular shapes of varying color and size offer a concise segmented feel to a web design. Clear headings and consistency throughout the website – such as all headings in blackened bold, and all subheadings in red – are other features that help contribute to clarity, simplicity, and a higher proportion of contented visitors.
